Unnamed Early Settlers

At various points in its prose history of Yoknapatawpha and Jefferson, Requiem for a Nun refers to the settlers who followed the frontier pioneers into the new land. There is some overlap in its representation of this group, and in the terms - frontier, pioneer - used to categorize them. For example, the earliest reference to the group who settle in the place that becomes Jefferson and begin clearing the land, says "now it was frontier, the men and women pioneers, tough, simple, and durable, seeking money or adventure or freedom or simple escape, and not too particular how they did it" (4). A later reference refers to "the husbandman" (171). These settlers occupy an intermediate stage, between "the forest men with rifles" and "the land speculators and the traders in slaves" (171).